Women choose neo-look salwar-kameez as office wear

This is a story I did for a news agency I'm working for.

Salwar kameez, the three-piece traditional Indian garment considered the second skin of the unfashionable brigade, is now being flaunted as corporate wear.

The neo-look salwar-kameez bears little resemblance to the dress that the women of Punjab have been wearing for years. The stylish cuts, the colour schemes and the smart motifs lend this Indian garment a truly global look.

Kameez is a knee-length tunic worn over a salwar, a trouser. A duppatta is a long flowing piece of cloth that completes the ensemble.

Unlike before there are hundreds of designs to choose from. But the range of fusion wear - a mix of ethnic and western designs - continues to be a hit with the young and the not-so-young.

The new designs, which can easily pass off as western attire, are doing well both in India and abroad. In fact the garments are being cleverly marketed as "Indo-western" wear.

Company executive Sadhana Mehta, who wears salwar-kameez to work, told IANS: "Some years ago I would never wear a salwar-kameez to work. The women wore corporate western suits to look smart like their male colleagues. Not anymore."

Apart from the neo-look, it is the comfort factor which makes the garment so popular.

"Comfort levels are high. It fits all body types. You can play around with designs which make you look fat, thin, tall, short," says Priya Pradhan, who owns a boutique in Bangalore.

A salesman at Westside, a retail clothes outlet, says, "Fusion fashion has given the salwar suit a new lease of life. We can see its presence in the West, where the salwar is seen as being 'cool'."

There are hundreds of online sites that sell only salwar-kameez. A spokesperson for a design house in New Delhi says, "Because of their graceful feminine elegance salwar-kameez fill the void created by western attire."

Even students love wearing the modern avatar of the salwar-kameez to the campus. Twenty-one-year old Maya, a Delhi University student, wears short kurtas which can pass off as spaghetti tops, over a salwar which can pass off as a trouser. She often wears a short kurta over a pair of jeans and tops it off with a stole (a dupatta).

But old-timers are not too happy with the neo-look. "The purpose of the dupatta is lost," rues 56-year-old Kuljeet Kaur, a housewife.

Vinoo Tripathi, a sociologist, has the last word. "The story of the salwar is another classic example of India's limited influence on the West and the complete westernisation of Indian tradition."

Raksha Kumar